The Development of ‘Moon Girl’ (Part Two)

So the last iteration of ‘Moon Girl’ was quite the disaster, and while it did stand as somewhat as a framework to build from, it was nowhere near as good as it could be. My mistake was in thinking of ‘Moon Girl’ more as a flat graphic – partially due to her beginnings as the equivalent of a ‘logo’ – than as a fully fledged character.

Some of the feedback I received also pointed towards a worrying trend of ‘Moon Girl’ being seen as a robot, and the point that her head is the moon not registering at all. From this i decided it was important to give ‘Moon Girl’ some more naturalistic qualities – more meat on her bones, as well as a more dynamic range of expressions.

The end result of her ‘humanising’ process. The proportions of this version never quite settled with me- in trying to make her chunkier i’d lost that ‘gangly teen’ look which was important in terms of making her moon head the focal point. This was irritating as the more anorexic version of ‘Moon Girl’ isnt that socially responsible, especially for a character aimed at teenage girls; but in the end her visual flow is more important than anything else (even if the stick-legged version could never support the weight of her gigantic bonce )

This version was perfect to use for colour tests however- the chunkier legs giving a little more room to work with for experimenting with trouser patterns.

The colour scheme was rather specific – and very ’80s. The outfit was chosen for its retro feel as well as its visual links to ‘space’ – a UFO skirt, star patterns on the jacket. Any future clothing variations would have this ‘space’ link – which would be unique to this particular character- her ‘style’ as it were.

After trying out a few variations i took the ones i thought were stronger and gave them another pass, tweaking colours here and there to make the outfits more coordinated.

Next i tweaked the problem areas: The hair was rather weak on the left side and didnt flow well, the legs were too short/chunky and the face needed a little more ‘oomph’ to make her a little less awkward. The end result is still looking off in terms of my intentions- the proportions of her face suggest she may be a little younger than i’d have wanted- but she is a far more ‘solid’ looking character than previous versions.

The coloured versions here are WIP as im still working on the character at the moment- And of course, there’s the obligatory version where i turn the lineart layer off and decide the next step is to make a ‘rendered’ version, which makes the time spent making all those chunky lines pretty irrelevant :).

Though of course, any version without lineart is going to be closer to how she would look in her ‘game’ context.

Oh yes, She has a game context. A game which will probably never be made. With the same target audience as the character. UNTAPPED MARKET YOU SAY?!

Either way, more from her world will come over the next couple of weeks :).